Optiplex GX280 - Should I upgrade it to Win7?

Keiichi25 said:

fireberd said:

Dell DOES NOT support Vista or Win 7 on this model. Thus there are no hardware drivers for any Dell proprietary hardware. You will be on your own to try and find drivers that will work for all the hardware. Dell only supports XP, NT4, Win 2000, DOS and Red Hat Linux 9.0.

Actually, Dell wouldn't support it anyways. The Optiplex GX280 series computers are like 5 to 6 years old. Well outside their current support range unless you bought the extended warranty, but for the most part, they would urge you to a newer computer anyways.

As for drivers in general... Once a computer is off their normal support life, they tend not to update the drivers even for the supported OS they post as there is rarely a need to keep the drivers up to date on models they no longer support. The support page will be up, but that is as far as they will support it and you are still on your own with drivers and the like. The pro of it all, though, is the older drivers will at least give people an idea of the hardware used like the Ethernet, the sound and board chipset versus bumbling around trying to figure it out by looking at the system board.

Dell Support or not is really a moot point. Even if the machine still has valid support for some reason the machine is NOT on the Dell Windows 7 List or the Microsoft Windows 7 List. So the fact that someone wants to load Windows 7 on the machine they should know that they are going to be completely responsible for supporting the machine. :) :)

We have many GX280 machines running in the enterprise with Windows 7. As a business class machine they work very well. (Note: 1gig of ram or better, new 160 gig 7200 RPM drive or better is required). They will not run CAD, GFX software, Video software, etc. very well if at all and we do NOT recommend that you do. :)

WindowsStar said:

Keiichi25 said:

fireberd said:

Dell DOES NOT support Vista or Win 7 on this model. Thus there are no hardware drivers for any Dell proprietary hardware. You will be on your own to try and find drivers that will work for all the hardware. Dell only supports XP, NT4, Win 2000, DOS and Red Hat Linux 9.0.

Actually, Dell wouldn't support it anyways. The Optiplex GX280 series computers are like 5 to 6 years old. Well outside their current support range unless you bought the extended warranty, but for the most part, they would urge you to a newer computer anyways.

As for drivers in general... Once a computer is off their normal support life, they tend not to update the drivers even for the supported OS they post as there is rarely a need to keep the drivers up to date on models they no longer support. The support page will be up, but that is as far as they will support it and you are still on your own with drivers and the like. The pro of it all, though, is the older drivers will at least give people an idea of the hardware used like the Ethernet, the sound and board chipset versus bumbling around trying to figure it out by looking at the system board.

Dell Support or not is really a moot point. Even if the machine still has valid support for some reason the machine is NOT on the Dell Windows 7 List or the Microsoft Windows 7 List. So the fact that someone wants to load Windows 7 on the machine they should know that they are going to be completely responsible for supporting the machine. :) :)

We have many GX280 machines running in the enterprise with Windows 7. As a business class machine they work very well. (Note: 1gig of ram or better, new 160 gig 7200 RPM drive or better is required). They will not run CAD, GFX software, Video software, etc. very well if at all and we do NOT recommend that you do. :)

Not too sure on the not being able to run CAD software. Mine has an Nvidia 9400GT 1GB. Yes, this is not a very good card, but it has been good enough for running Cube 2: Sauerbraten. Also, I never use customer support unless it is for a reinstall issue with software I purchased (usually caused by anti-piracy measures in it)